However, I have found some of my most frustrating experiences can come from that dungeon to date. I recently had a failed purist tinker run. Mostly because 1/3 of the map was blocked off by high level monsters, and all of the kill accellerating(halpmeh, burndayraz, fine sword) abilities were behind them. It was ridiculously frustrating. Granted the one key thing I did wrong was I should have saved one of my transmute scrolls to solve that problem(that I didn't immediately realize I had). So I ended up losing to tower of goo, because I had to expend such a sheer amount of resources just to level up to GET to the other side of that wall that there wasn't enough left.

I am not sure something needs to be changed or not. The level was designed for tight corridors and monsters blocking them. However if I was going to suggest something to make myself feel better(and potentially people who literally know no better) maybe make monsters above level 7 like 10% less likely to sit in a choke point.

Hmm... It's also unfortunate that random bosses can screw you over. I've had perfectly good berserker runs go to hell because of a late game find of the Tower of Goo and no GG. There should be some way to immediately know your random boss and plan accordingly through preps. I'd recommend bringing back scout:boss if there was a place for it anywhere.

You can hit him with weakenings or stone hearts, you can fireball him without softening him up, death protections work, and not burning your dodge potions if you have them makes him popcorn... Also, you can use Taurog's DP string, or TT's potions string to take him out with little problems. CYDSTEPP on priests also works in some variants, and so on and so forth... Even big health and Stonesking can get you places (I've binlored him to death occasionaly)

He does make you pay attention, that's true, but unless you go all in before you find him he's all right. Or the easiest boss by far with dodge and reflex (with the possible exception of the warlock).

In the case that had me whining I found Tower pretty early. The problem was I was finding nothing to do anything about him until about 95% explored. And just because of bad luck I had to spend tons of resources to even GET that exploration. With not enough left for a mid fight level up or to get the boss below 20% health in the end. I think this only strikes me as problematic as compared to the directional normals which I always have a lot more consistency with.

The den and the cave, once you unlock the other bosses, are both more challenging than some of the early directionals. Actually all but the western one, which is sorta genrally the hardest. The den really captures the feel of the alpha in this sense.